NPR:

As of Tuesday, Michael Erb was the No. 1 customer reviewer on Amazon. He has reviewed everything from doorbells to travel mugs to toothbrushes.

As Erb has risen up the ranks among Amazon reviewers, the stream of free stuff has grown because manufacturers have started sending stuff directly to him to review.

This feels really shady particularly because Amazon doesn’t identify “paid” reviewers.

Alek’s Controllable Halloween Decorations:

Use the three halloween webcams for a live view of a buncha halloween decorations & lights and also CONTROL them – heck, you can even inflate or deflate the giant Frankenstein & Homer Simpson – D’OH!

All three webcams are online from 1800 to 2200 MDT (GMT-6) which is when you can turn stuff on & off and “entertain” the neighbors.

Ignore the spectacularly ugly web design and just think of all the tech this guy has installed.

io9:

In the span of just a few minutes, short films can offer up spine-tingling chills, nightmarish monsters, and plenty of grim humor. Here are a few of our favorite horror shorts that we’ve featured in the past year, ready to deliver a quick hit of Halloween horror.

Proof that horror doesn’t have to take long to scare the bejesus out of you.

Wired:

Fearful of relegating TV to remaining “dumb,” consumer electronics manufacturers look to the success of Apple’s iPhone/iPad/iTunes, Google/Android, or Amazon ecosystems as examples of what could happen with smart TV.

But do consumer electronics companies really think they can monetize the new feature of accessing the web with smart TVs? Even with an industry standard for smart TVs, it’s not likely that those companies could start charging Netflix, Amazon, Pandora, and others for access to their screens. And conversely, by not controlling the device, these service providers operate at the whim of the smart TV.

I’m one of those people that think, Gene Munster’s “predictions” notwithstanding, that Apple has no intention of releasing an actual television set but instead will develop the present Apple TV into a fuller featured set-top box.

Bored Panda:

To celebrate this wonderful and colorful season, we’ve got a beautiful collection of photos of autumn landscapes that highlight the last explosion of rich, vivid color before the coming winter.

I feel sorry for those in tropical places that never get to experience Fall. That is, until the snows/rains come and then I’m just envious of them.

The Artery:

The Boston and St. Louis symphony orchestras are home to some of the country’s most talented musicians, but neither is above some good old-fashioned smack talk ahead of the World Series.

Trash talking band geeks prove that band geeks can’t trash talk.

Official Travel Guide to Norway: Rjukan is situated deep in the narrow Vestfjord Valley in Telemark. Due to the high mountains surrounding the valley, among them The Gaustadtoppen Mountain at 1,883 metres above sea level, there is no sunlight six … Continued

Grantland:

The Stanley Cup is the most beautiful of sports trophies. It shimmers. It’s big. When ancient peoples returned from the hunt, they held their prize aloft. When players today win a championship, in a timeless gesture of triumph, they throw their hands above their heads. And in sports, nothing fits better between a player’s hands than the Stanley Cup. It is perfect.

It didn’t begin that way.

Ken Dryden was not only a great goaltender (in the Hall of Fame for my beloved Montreal Canadiens) but he is also a great writer. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of his amazing book, “The Game” (Widely acknowledged as the best hockey book ever written and lauded by Sports Illustrated as one of the “Top 10 Sports Books of All Time”), he’s written another chapter. If you’d like to see why Canadians love hockey so much, pay particular attention to the small town aspect of the chapter.

The New York Times:

Men in lifting belts wheel hand trucks stacked high with food from across the globe: 80 pounds of ground beef, 700 pounds of top butt, 175 shoulder tenders, 1 case of New York strips, all from the Midwest; 5 pounds of chicken livers, 6 cases of chicken bones, 120 chicken breast cutlets; 30 pounds of bacon; 300 littleneck clams, 110 pounds of mussels from Prince Edward Island, another 20 pounds from New Zealand, 50 trout, 25 pounds of U10 shrimp (fewer than 10 pieces per pound), 55 whole dorade, 3 cases of escargot, 360 Little Skookum oysters from Washington State, 3 whole tunas, 45 skates, 18 black sea bass, 2 bags of 100 to 120 whelks, 45 lobster culls.

That’s just the fish and meat order.

Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes at a restaurant?

1997 Jeep Cherokee:

If you do not own a toolbox, have never changed your own oil, and are scared of firearms: THIS VEHICLE IS NOT FOR YOU.

If you have been posting on Facebook all about how excited you are for pumpkin latte season: THIS VEHICLE IS NOT FOR YOU.

If you get offended easy and often, whine to your co-workers, and bitch a lot: THIS VEHICLE IS NOT FOR YOU.

If you own a Bieber album, white Oakleys, Affliction t-shirts, or those candy-assed stitched-pocket jeans: THIS VEHICLE IS NOT FOR YOU.

This the greatest Craigslist ad ever and I’m not man enough to buy it from this guy. Thanks to my friend Jeff La Grua for the link.

Adobe:

Elephants are increasingly endangered as people expand into their habitats, and poaching has drastically exacerbated the plight of the African elephant in particular. In 2012 the National Geographic cover story “Blood Ivory” revealed a complex, international web of trade that has contributed to the deaths of at least 25,000 elephants each year. Fewer than 700,000 now remain in the wild.

With every tweet that includes the hashtag #ProtecttheElephants Adobe will donate $1 to the National Geographic Society to help save these elephants.

Please tweet. If for no other reason than to cost Adobe a buck.

The First Cut:

Already, their thoughts are drifting up a flight of stairs to the sprawling dissection lab, where in two days they will meet and become intimate with something many have scarcely encountered: Death.

Today they begin the defining course of their medical education.

A required rite of passage on the way to a doctor’s white coat, gross anatomy offers first-year students a hands-on tour of an actual human body.

Talk about hands on training.

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency:

Religious fervor is on my mind as I walk in the bright morning sunlight from the parking lot to my Apple Store. I pass the line of people waiting for the new iPhone, and most have been camping on that filthy walkway all week. Don’t they have jobs? Or classes? Or significant others? These hardcores wouldn’t deign to pick one up next week. They need it today. They’re in it to win it.

What’s it like to be involved in an Apple Product Launch from the POV of a store employee.

The folks at Bad Lip Reading have reinvented Game of Thrones as a hilarious, nonsensical comedy.

NYTimes.com:

Judge Allan H. Davis of Hancock County Probate Court, had declared Mr. Miller dead in 1994, several years after he mysteriously disappeared.

In fact, Mr. Miller, 61, had simply drifted away to work in Georgia and Florida, he told the judge on Monday in Findlay, Ohio. Now, he said, he wanted to apply for a driver’s license and needed to reactivate his Social Security number.

“I don’t know where that leaves you, but you’re still deceased as far as the law is concerned,” Judge Davis told Mr. Miller.

Funny story but you’ve got to feel a little sorry for the guy.

How may We Hate You?:

A guest calls from their room.

GUEST: Can you send someone to come get my bags?

CONCIERGE: I can’t do that, but I can connect you to the bellman.

GUEST: No, no. I need you to call them. I’ve been mean to them all week so they’re not going to help me.

This is a hilarious follow up to the “Thomas Cook dissatisfied vacationer complaints” we posted yesterday.

The New York Times:

I visited Steven A. Witherly, a food scientist who wrote an insider’s guide, “Why Humans Like Junk Food,” and we raided his lab to taste and experiment our way through the psychobiology of what makes Nacho Cheese Doritos so alluring.

Anyone else love these things but feel dirty inside after scarfing down a bag?

Author Tom Clancy has passed away at age 66.

The New York Observer:

Colin Powell makes the case: pissing people off is both inevitable and necessary. This doesn’t mean that the goal is pissing people off. Pissing people off doesn’t mean you’re doing the right things, but doing the right things will almost inevitably piss people off.

Understand the difference.

I piss people off on a regular basis. It’s rarely my goal but I honestly don’t care if it happens. This article explains it well.

Semil:

I was lucky enough to watch enough baseball to know there was one player who was simply better than everyone else. He wasn’t perfect, but he was about as close as they come to perfection.

For Yankee fans, baseball fans and fans of class. And if you haven’t seen the video of Rivera’s last appearance at Yankee Stadium, watch it here. But have a tissue handy.

The Globe and Mail:

This investigative report reveals that shortly after the release of the first iPhone, Verizon asked BlackBerry to create a touchscreen “iPhone killer.” But the result was a flop, so Verizon turned to Motorola and Google instead.

Mr. Lazaridis opposed the launch plan for the BlackBerry 10 phones and argued strongly in favour of emphasizing keyboard devices. But Mr. Heins and his executives did not take the advice and launched the touchscreen Z10, with disastrous results.

Fascinating article about the demise of a once great brand.

Grantland:

Twenty years ago, people talked about Myst the same way they talked about The Sopranos during its first season: as one of those rare works that irrevocably changed its medium. It certainly felt like nothing in gaming would or could be the same after it.

If you remember the game, you remember that feeling of landing on Myst Island for the first time, staggeringly bereft of information in a way that felt like some kind of reverse epiphany, left with no option but to start exploring.

People who had never gamed before in their lives bought new computers so they could play Myst.

I remember playing Myst and being dumbfounded, confused, exhilarated, frustrated and fascinated all at the same time.

BBC News:

In the early hours of the 26th of September in 1983, the Soviet Union’s early-warning systems detected an incoming missile strike from the United States. The protocol for the Soviet military would have been to retaliate with a nuclear attack of its own.

But duty officer Stanislav Petrov – whose job it was to register apparent enemy missile launches – decided not to report them to his superiors, and instead dismissed them as a false alarm.

His decision may have saved the world.

Chilling story and terrifying to think what might have happened.